Ottawa-based global telecommunications provider Mitel has a different take on unified communications. This is the first telco to re-engineer all its business applications so they can run just like any other service upon VMware's vSphere 4.0 hypervisor. Whereas most corporations run their human resource applications, email and perhaps a cloud backup or data replication service in the cloud, now companies can run their call centers, PBX and a number of other communications tools in a virtual machine. How was this done? It took a two-year partnership with VMware involving software development, testing, quality assurance and beta testing to work out all the details, but Mitel Freedom was officially launched a year ago at VMworld, and the company already has about 1,000 small and midsize business customers using it. Mitel says its Freedom architecture, through a single cloud-ready software stream, delivers a suite of open-standard communications and collaboration features that offer freedom from closed architectures, such as those typically provided by large telcos. Mitel Freedom enables organizations to implement their own applications on any network, extends the "in-office" experience anywhere on any device and offers choice of commercial options. Mitel operates 80 offices in 90 countries, and it works through a network of about 1,600 value-added resellers and partners. This slide show highlights the features of the Freedom platform.
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On the Road
Mitel is taking its message on the road in the United States via the Mitel Freedom bus, which is a showcase for all the applications on the company's cloud service menu. It carries its own server. The bus was photographed at its Aug. 15 stop in San Jose, Calif.
What's on the Menu
Mitel's business suite includes customizable ERP, CRM, email, virtual desktop infrastructure, a mobile gateway and a port for other Web services. Because these are virtualized using VMware's hypervisor, they can run on any type of network, Mitel said, and have been designed for use on any type of user device.
The Central Problem: Decentralization
The idea of a unified enterprise communications system is that disparate applications residing on different platforms can be brought into one control module for centralized administration to enable many more efficiencies.
Consolidation on VMware Is the Idea
Just as applications such as human resources, backup storage and private cloud-type value chain apps can be virtualized, Mitel has made telecommunications agile via VMware's hypervisor. After all, voice transmissions are also data files—just a different type of data than documents, photos, video or spreadsheets.
Voice Runs Along With Other Business Apps
Mitel Freedom can be housed on a server of any type, the voice quality is guaranteed by Mitel, and it is scalable enough for SMBs.
A Typical SMB Use Case
In this example of a current customer, Mitel's virtualized telecommunications system is running several applications through the main network to a few small branch offices, which serves a number of mobile users. Little or no modification to an existing IT system is necessary.
Use Case No. 2: Two Data Centers
The Mitel virtualized voice system can scale up to handle a couple of data centers, as shown here, behind the router and firewall. However, it pretty much resembles the previous SMB use case thereafter, with little or no changes needed in the network to include branch offices.
Mitel's Current Menu
A year after launch, the Mitel virtualized system has a list of features currently available and a few still on the drawing boards for launch in the next few months.
Where Mitel Sits in the Market
Due to its unique virtualization deployment, Mitel currently resides alone in Gartner Research's upper right Magic Quadrant. Competitors include Alcatel-Lucent, Siemens, Cisco Systems, Avaya, Shoretel and Microsoft.
VMware Market Share
VMware's hypervisors are currently running a high percentage of the world's virtualized workloads and that Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, Red Hat and others are trailing.
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See All Slideshows
Ottawa-based global telecommunications provider Mitel has a different take on unified communications. This is the first telco to re-engineer all its business applications so they can run just like any other service upon VMware's vSphere 4.0 hypervisor. Whereas most corporations run their human resource applications, email and perhaps a cloud backup or data replication service in the cloud, now companies can run their call centers, PBX and a number of other communications tools in a virtual machine. How was this done? It took a two-year partnership with VMware involving software development, testing, quality assurance and beta testing to work out all the details, but Mitel Freedom was officially launched a year ago at VMworld, and the company already has about 1,000 small and midsize business customers using it. Mitel says its Freedom architecture, through a single cloud-ready software stream, delivers a suite of open-standard communications and collaboration features that offer freedom from closed architectures, such as those typically provided by large telcos. Mitel Freedom enables organizations to implement their own applications on any network, extends the "in-office" experience anywhere on any device and offers choice of commercial options. Mitel operates 80 offices in 90 countries, and it works through a network of about 1,600 value-added resellers and partners. This slide show highlights the features of the Freedom platform.